Tag: sanada ririna

Ririna doesn’t simply say she’s willing to abandon their arranged marriage for Yukari and Misaki’s sake; she lays out in a very detailed and realistic way exactly the way it’s going to happen, and it involves her and Yukari pretending like they hate each other’s guts—in other words, lying.

Yukari doesn’t like the sound of that one bit, as he doesn’t want to even pretend he doesn’t like Ririna. But Ririna appeals to Yukari’s deep and inspiring love for Misaki—without which Ririna would never have come out of her shell—and is able to get him to agree to her plan.

That means, at some point, if all goes as planned, Ririna will have herself “recalculated” to find another partner to marry, and asks Yukari to ‘show her what to do’, so to speak. The practical excuse aside, both Ririna and Yukari are lying here as well.

Ririna loves both Misaki and Yukari, so she doesn’t want to hurt either. What she fails to realize is that Misaki and Yukari have the same exact reason they don’t want to hurt her: they love her too. Forget about levels or tenure; love is love, and especially during one’s youth it can be extremely hard to distinguish one form for another.

As a result, Yukari initially stays away from the wedding dress fitting, convinced he’s hurt both Ririna (by agreeing to her plan) and Misaki (by kissing her in the chapel), and not wanting to cause any more pain to either. Nisaka shows up and lays it out as only Nisaka can: people who are hurt by loving him is not his problem; it’s theirs.

Nisaka speaks from experience here; he knows he’ll never have Yukari or even get him to look at him the way he wants…but he’s not going to bother him about it. He tells Yukari that when it comes to love, you have to look out for number one.

In Yukari’s case, he doesn’t feel comfortable living life without Misaki or Ririna. At the chapel, Misaki assures Ririna that her plan is impossible, because she, Misaki, loves both Ririna and Yukari. She couldn’t let Ririna drop her marriage to Yukari any more than Yukari or Ririna wanted to hurt Misaki by getting married.

It’s quite the conundrum! And certainly one for which there are no long-term answers. Presumably, Ririna and Yukari will one day marry, just as Misaki will marry her match (we finally learn definitively that she hasn’t received her notice yet). It would seem that love is not a problem for any of the three; it’s just a matter of learning what kind of love that is, and how that will (or won’t) jibe with cultural and societal norms.

Is this finale a cop-out that lets everyone off the hook by delaying a concrete decision on who marries whom? Sure is. But I asked for someone to win last week, and it would seem that, for now at least, everyone wins…Except Nisaka!

Ultimately, this show lacked the teeth that I had expected of a premise in which people were, if not outright forced, very strongly nudged into arranged marriages. As I’ve stated in earlier reviews, Japan’s appallingly low birth rate is a crisis that threatens the nation’s very existence. Drastic societal measures are needed that the notoriously unreliable bureaucracy likely won’t even begin to tackle until it’s too late.

Koi to Uso was initially, and could have remained, a fascinating look into the “what-if” scenario. But ultimately, The Yukari Law was little more than window dressing for a watchable but otherwise by-the-numbers youth-love-polygon show. It could have been much more, but would have had to go to darker places it clearly wasn’t interested in going.

With Yukari, Ririna, and Misaki making little progress in discerning who’s going to end up marrying whom, the three (plus Nisaka) end up at…a wedding. Subtle. Ririna and Misaki are also recruited by the ceremonial hall’s marketing rep to model wedding dresses. Also subtle.

The wedding itself is highly scripted and a bit stiff, with all the usual traditions and nothing in the way of really breaking the mold. The individuals actually getting married seem a bit lost in the procedure of the thing.

Still, a wedding is a wedding, and Misaki and Ririna have a blast, and are glad they were able to attend together. Misaki echos Arisa’s assertion that Ririna has become more open and easier to talk to, and Riri attributes this to her time with Misaki and Yukari.

Misaki also says she’d love to see Ririna’s wedding, all but surrendering Yukari to her. But Ririna can probably sense the lack of conviction in those words, especially when she peeks in on Yukari comforting a crying Misaki with a big long kiss.

I’m sorry, but at this stage, Yukari is being a big fat jerk here. I’m sure Yukari didn’t like seeing Misaki cry, but kissing her will only provide the briefest relief if he ends up marrying Ririna, which, that’s the case, he shouldn’t be kissing other girls. Get your fucking shit together, man!

Ririna seeing Yukari kiss Misaki casts a pall over the rest of the episode, as Ririna and Yukari’s families join forces to mudge their betrothed kids a little closer together at a splendid hot springs inn, even putting them in the same room together.

Their tour of the town demonstrates their easy chemistry with one another, and the fact they both genuinely enjoy each other’s company. They’re not exactly setting the world on fire with their romantic passion, but who cares? They’re a nice, cute couple!

So after witnessing Yukari and Misaki kiss, and Yukari telling her how he’s the person he is today because he followed Misaki and admired her from afar like a goddess…in the night, Ririna decides to tell Yukari she thinks he should choose Misaki over her.

If Ririna and Misaki weren’t such good people and good friends, they wouldn’t be falling over each other trying to sacrifice their happiness for that of the other’s, but Yukari’s persistent indecision—and his appalling indiscretion where Misaki is concerned—has also led us to this point.

The only satisfying way Yukari can respond to this by either accepting or rejecting Ririna’s concession. I’m fine with both, honestly. I may have sounded like a Ririna x Yukari shipper of late, but I’m fine with either girl “winning.” As long as someone wins, dammit!

Oh, and throughout all of this, why haven’t Misaki and Nisaka received their notices? Are Yukari and Ririna really that much older than them? The fact we have no idea who their assigned spouses are leaves me worried the show’s withholding that info for a last-episode cliffhanger—perhaps even a prelude to a second season I neither want nor need.

I probably say this too often…but that’s more like it! Interaction between Yukari and Ririna is bascially why I watch this show. I’m not a rigid follower of the orthodoxy of the Yukari Law, but they were deemed the best match, and everything I’ve seen of them suggests that despite a few bumps in the road, they’re realizing that too.

But what about that damned Shuu? What did she mean about notices and fated partners? Both Yukari and Ririna want to find out, so they call a “truce” and arrange a meeting. Yukari tries first but fails, and Ririna comes to comfort him while he’s feeling low on himself, and sure enough, she knows the kind of burial mound he’s building in the sand.

Ririna doesn’t have any trouble arranging a meeting, but when she comes right out and asks Shuu what she meant (in her usual Ririna straightforward way), she demands a change of venue to a cat cafe. There, while playing with badly-drawn cats, Shuu underscores her one and only goal: to protect Misaki.

Shuu didn’t use to think much of Misaki, until she found out she was in love, and has been awe of that part of her ever since, noting the way she “shines.” But while Shuu’s grandmother designed the Notice system and she herself is some kind of genius and tech whiz, Shuu is still simply taking a side based on her own feelings, which is not what the system is all about.

Yajima, who tracks them all down, makes Shuu understand in no uncertain terms that love between government-matched individuals can’t really compare to two people who just naturally fall in love…but that’s not the point and never was. Surely, for instance, there are other matters of compatibility she’s discounting.

Indeed, The System, in its dispassionate way, seems able to discover pairings that would never have naturally happened, such as that between two people as different in personality yet alike in their isolation as Yukari and Ririna.

And what do you know, paired together and given the chance, they seem to be doing quite well. So much so, that their affection for one another is starting to take precedence over the third party’s happiness, even if neither is interested in hurting her.

Misaki herself has already said many times she’s willing to live with the fact she wasn’t chosen. I wish Yukari would hurry up and state for the record who he’s choosing. But it’s good to see the episode begin and end with him and Ririna back on good terms, having come out of the first true conflict in their still-new relationship none the worse for wear.

A nervous Yukari spins his wheels the whole episode cursing himself for doing more in a school festival that does little more than take up time better spent with him and Ririna making up. Ririna barely has three lines, occupying the margins of the episode with her new buddy Arisa.

While the school play scenario was tolerable last week, another entire week of contrived “Romeo & Juliet” dot-connecting went a bit too far, and some last-second shenanigans from whassernam, the Yuki-Onna…Igarashi, mark a return to the plotting issues of the first episode, and make for a tedious, meandering episode.

I get it; Yukari’s in a weird place right now, and he’s hesitant to do or say anything that will make that place any weirder, and neither Nisaka nor Misaki make it any easier for him (not that they should).

But honestly, I felt like I was caught in an endless circle of Yukari milling around, worrying about things, not to mention his ultra-weak flyer game. Nisaka and Misaki seem to be putting on their performances for Yukari’s sake, as a means of openly expressing how they truly feel through the lines of their roles.

Unsurprisingly, the two knock it out of the park due in part to the real emotions and conviction they put behind their acting. When it’s over, Yukari is back to wandering around the school like a headless chicken, and runs into Igarashi, who drops the bombshell that calls the notice that names Ririna as his future wife into question.

Igarashi tells Yukari that Misaki, not Ririna, is his “destined partner,” and JUST THEN Ririna just HAPPENSto walk by and hear that bit, and like Yukari, demands to know what Whitey-chan means. We’ve seen her in a control room doing tech stuff for the Ministry, but if you ask me, it doesn’t matter anymore which girl is supposed to be his chosen future wife.

We’ve got a love triangle between them regardless, not even counting Nisaka, and that’s not going away just because all doubt of the notice’s veracity has been extinguished (which may not even be possible). Fewer plot contrivances from tertiary characters—and a little more time inside Ririna’s head—would be greatly appreciated.

Ririna continues to keep her distance as the class play (Gender-swapped Romeo & Juliet) comes together in Yukari’s class. Misaki is impressing in her practices, while Nisaka is being fawned over by the girls he doesn’t like as usual, but when the costume designs are unveiled, he peaces out.

If he doesn’t want to do it, why should he? Yukari’s attempts to persuade him otherwise are failing…when Nisaka’s Dad suddenly shows up.

Nisaka’s Dad makes it clear Nisaka was always a hugely popular, magnetic kid with tons of friends, but while Yukari says he’s still popular, things have changed. Now friends are at a premium, and his Dad urges him to treasure the few who stand by him, which is kind of a dick Dad move. Whether his Dad picks up that his son likes Yukari, I have no idea, but he does like that someone like Yukari is friends with him.

When Nisaka shits on R&J as a story about two selfish fools, Yukari likens it more to their situation as notice-havers. He believes even if they’re never with the ones they love or no one accepts it, it’s “not meaningless”, which, while true in a sense, is far too on the nose with Nisaka’s feelings for Yukari to not feel a bit forced.

The only bit of Ririna we see is as she slips a postcard into the mailbox, and Yukari notes its historical theme is a little off the mark, as he really only likes burial mounds. It’s a sign they can only learn so much from each other through exchanged letters. But he sent her tickets to the play, so hopefully she’ll show.

While it’s nice to get some Yukari and Nisaka quality time in, it didn’t really move the needle forward on their plotline, unless you count Yukari meeting Nisaka’s father as progress. The fact that Yukari’s feelings are not romantic and Nisaka’s are, and Yukari has no idea of the difference, continues to hold it back. It feels static.

We witness something similar when Misaki and Yukari find themselves alone at school again. They don’t make out this time, but Misaki reports that despite her ban and the realization she wasn’t chosen, her love for Yukari has only grown and intensified. When Yukari asks her what love is, she does what anyone would do: define it in terms of how she’s felt it, all the years she’s known Yukari.

The fact that she wasn’t chosen to be his wife by the Ministry cruelly has zero effect on that love, meaning it’s now a source of short-term happiness and long-term pain. She’s also worried Yukari is starting to fall for Ririna (if he hasn’t already), and, well, he kinda is.

So again, nothing new here: Yukari still doesn’t quite know what to do. I’m not saying it’s up to him to immediately choose someone and move on, but that kind of decision is not too far off the horizon.